The Betting and Gaming Council has spent most of a year warning that it might
take the Gambling Commission to court over financial risk checks. It still has
not done it.
The gap between the threat and the filing is the whole story here. Nothing has
been challenged, nothing has been paused, and the checks are proceeding on the
Commission’s timetable rather than the industry’s.
What the BGC actually said
Chief executive Grainne Hurst wrote to the Commission’s interim chairman
Charles Counsell, copying in the Culture Secretary, the gambling minister and
acting chief executive Sarah Gardner.
Her wording was careful. Implementing at that stage would be “disproportionate
and potentially open to legal challenge”. That is a lawyer’s sentence, and it
commits to nothing at all.
The Commission pressed ahead anyway. On 7 July it confirmed that
financial risk assessments
would come in, in stages, starting at a far higher threshold than the one
originally proposed.
The BGC’s response two days later said it was “deeply disappointed and
frustrated”. It did not say it was going to court. It has not said so since.
It is worth noting what “far higher” means in practice. The first stage
applies only at the largest operators, and only where net deposits pass £5,000
in a rolling 24 hours, or £2,500 for anyone under 25. The £1,000 figure everyone
argued about belongs to the final stage, which has no date.
What a legal challenge would actually be
Judicial review, almost certainly, and judicial review is a narrower thing
than most people assume when they hear the word “sue”.
A court asked to review this would not rule on whether financial risk checks
are a good idea. It would rule on whether the Commission reached its decision
lawfully: within its powers, after proper consultation, on evidence it was
entitled to rely on.
Which is why the trade body keeps returning to the pilot data rather than to
principle. Its strongest public point is that different credit reference
agencies returned different results for the same customer. As an argument about
process, that has somewhere to go.
There is also a clock. Under the civil procedure rules a judicial review claim
must be brought promptly, and in any event within three months of the grounds
arising. If the 7 July decision is the thing being challenged, that window
closes in early October.
“Promptly” is doing real work in that sentence. Sitting on a decision for
eleven weeks and then filing on the last available day is exactly the sort of
thing a judge is entitled to take a dim view of.
And filing would not, on its own, stop anything. A claim does not suspend the
decision it attacks. Somebody would have to ask the court separately for that,
and persuade it, which is a second argument with a second chance of losing.
Where this leaves you
Precisely where you were. No court has been asked to stop anything, so nothing
stops. Nothing about depositing, playing or withdrawing at a
licensed UK casino
changes because a trade body sent a letter.
The more effective pressure has come from Parliament. The Culture, Media and
Sport Committee wrote to the Commission in July with five questions, including a
demand for the full dataset and methodology behind the thresholds, and set a
deadline of 24 July for answers.
That is the slower route and much the less dramatic one. It is also the one
that has actually extracted anything.
Our reading is that the letter was leverage, and that it worked as leverage.
The thresholds moved. The timetable moved. Filing a claim would put those gains
in front of a judge who may not care about either.
So watch the calendar rather than the press releases. If early October passes
without a claim being issued, the threat was the strategy all along. We will
report it either way, and we would rather tell you that than pretend a lawsuit
exists.
18+. Gambling should be entertainment, not income. Long term the
house wins. Free and confidential help is at BeGambleAware.org.
